Summary

The religion known as Islam emerged on the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century and spread quickly. Today, the Muslim population is estimated at 1.2 billion, making it the world's second-largest religion. Islam is also the world's fastest-growing religion. It is estimated that there are more than 6 million Muslims living in the United States and Canada. The modern global community makes it essential that students understand this important monotheistic faith. The eight books in the INTRODUCING ISLAM series provide a comprehensive overview of the religion and its teachings, and also discuss such important issues as the relationship of Islam to other major world faiths, such as Christianity and Judaism, the growth of Islam in North America, and the socioeconomic conditions of countries in the Muslim world.

School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up-Carr emphasizes the diversity and geographic spread of Muslim cultures, as well as the different types of governments under which they live. Hodges examines Muslim attitudes on a wide variety of issues, based on a Gallup poll, and includes considerable coverage of home life. Whitehead focuses on the Islamist movement of the past century, the development of Islamist governments, and the differences between Islamists and moderates in such countries as Algeria, Indonesia, and Egypt. All three books provide readers with a much-more nuanced picture than Western news media. While there is no fictionalizing, neither are there any humanizing stories of individual Muslims. The style is quite clear and fairly concise. The color photographs are well chosen, well captioned, and well keyed to the text they illustrate. However, there are no maps, even in Hodges's book on geography! Matthew S. Gordon's Islam (Facts On File, 2001) covers much of the same ground but in much less detail.-Jonathan Betz-Zall, City University Library, Everett, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.